Tag Archives: RSS

Our association with elections are only till the point of JanJagaran ( awareness ) and motivating people for voting. The nation is bigger than political machinations. Elections have a peculiarity that people call each other names and bring each other down. It is important that the nation overcomes that temporary phase and we work towards consolidating society, character building in society and make our society invincible said Dr. Mohan ji Bhagwat, Sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamasevak Sangh in the Tritiya Varsh Sangh Shiksha Varga Samarop program ( valedictory program of the 3rd year training program of RSS ) .

Swayamsewak should also understand that by doing simple tasks whole heartedly in the daily shakhas they will become fully developed individuals who consider the whole society as their own, without any animosity towards others in their mind and they will do whatever is required in the interest of the nation, without any hesitation. This is a well-known fact. Swayamsewaks of the Sangh are doing various duties all over the country. Over one lakh seventy thousand social service activities are conducted by Swayamsewaks in distant areas, where there is a need, like forests, mountains and rural areas, working along with the society, spending their own money and effort and without taking any monetary help from the Government. They have entered into many sectors of the society and there they have done many praise worthy tasks. The swayamsewaks are the first to arrive whenever there is a minor or major crisis and they are always prepared to work for the welfare of the country and if necessary, to sacrifice their lives.

This incident was during the 1971 war with Pakistan, when Bangladesh was not yet created. When the Pakistani soldiers were entering the West Bengal border, a vanvasi boy called Arjun Tirki, studying in ninth standard, who was the mukhya sikshak of the shakha, noticed this and ran to the BSF camp and told them that the Pakistani soldiers were entering and asked the BSF soldiers to come quickly. There were only three or four people guarding the post and a whole Pakistani regiment was coming. The BSF jawans gave gunpowder boxes to the boy and asked him to take the boxes to the post said that they would be following. The boy delivered the boxes to the four soldiers and stayed with them. During the fight he was shot and became a martyr.

There is a memorial in a village near Raigunj dedicated to Arjun Thirki. He was a true swayamsewak of the Sangh. It is easy to sing the song ‘O mother may your glory remain forever, though we may or may not be here for four days’, but to become ready for this it is necessary to have dedicated practice every day. With this practice Swayamsewaks with strong qualities having an understanding of the clear meaning and respect for Hindutva in the mind, having the strength to protect Hindutva with body mind and intellect, with strong intention to take the whole society with them and walking along side with the whole society, will be developed or created.

Prof. Rajendra Singh (29 January 1922 – 14 July 2003 ), popularly called Rajju Bhaiya, was the fourth Sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh between 1994 and 2000.

He worked as a professor and head of the Department of Physics at Allahabad University but left to devote his life for the Sangh in the mid-1960s. Rajju Bhaiyya was acknowledged as an exceptionally brilliant student by Sir C. V. Raman, the physicist and Nobel Prize-winner, when he was his examiner in M.Sc. He also offered Singh a fellowship for advanced research in nuclear physics.

He joined Allahabad University after majoring in Physics to teach Spectroscopy. He taught at the university for several years, where later he was appointed head of the Physics Department. He was also considered an expert in nuclear physics which was very rare those days in India. He was a very popular teacher of the subject, using simplicity and clear concepts.

With the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh :

Singh was active in the Quit India Movement of 1942 and it was during this time that he came in contact with the RSS. From then onwards the Sangh influenced his life. He resigned from his university post in 1966 and offered full-time services to the RSS as a ‘prant pracharak’ of Uttar Pradesh, . He was later entrusted with responsibility of Sar Karyavaha (General Secretary) in the 1980s. In 1994, he was nominated to succeed BalaSahebji Deoras as Sarsanghchalak.

While in Uttar Pradesh, he worked with Lal Bahadur Shastri, Chandra Shekhar and V.P. Singh. Murali Manohar Joshi was also one of his best students.

Rajju Bhaiyya shared an excellent rapport with political leaders cutting across ideological lines besides academicians, social workers and intellectuals. He abdicated the post of Sarsanghchalak on account of his failing health in February 2000 and nominated the K. S. Sudarshan ji for the post.

During emergency he went underground and toured whole India. He was also responsible for organizing human rights convention presided by Justice VM Tarkunde in Delhi in 1976. He was also responsible for setting up friends of India Society International.

One of his most important beliefs was: “All people are basically nice. One should deal with every person by believing in his goodness. Anger, jealousy, etc. are the offshoots of his past experiences, which affect his behavior. Primarily every person is nice and everyone is reliable.”

Rajju Bhaiyya was a firm believer in the concept of Swadeshi and empowering rural economy. Initiating the rural developmental activities, he had declared in 1995 that the utmost priority should be given in making the villages hunger-free, disease-free and educative. Today, there are over 100 villages where the rural development work done by swayamsevaks has inspired the people of surrounding villages and their experiments are being emulated by those people.

Addressing the Vijayadashami festival at Nagpur in 1995, Singh remembered Mohandas K. Gandhi and Lal Bahadur Shastri. He challenged the way in which the central government was working on fulfilling the dreams of these two statesmen.

Rajju Bhaiyya wanted to establish a memorial named after Bismil in Delhi, the capital of India. He died on 14 July 2003 at Kaushik Ashram in Pune, Maharashtra.

The Govt of Bharat has announced Bharat Ratna for Nanaji Deshmukh ( posthumously ) on Jan 25th, 2019. Here is a brief note about him.

Chandikadas Amritrao Deshmukh ( Nanaji ) was born on October 11,1916 in a modest Maharashtrian family at Kadoli, a small town in Parbhani district. He had a burning zeal and desire for education and knowledge that he did not shy away from working as a vendor and selling vegetables to raise money for paying his tuition fee & realising his objective.

Nanaji was deeply inspired by Lokamanya Tilak and his national thoughts. He showed keen interest in social service and activities. His family was in close contact with Dr. Hedgewar who was a regular visitor to the family of Nanaji. He could discern an immense hidden potential in Nanaji and encouraged him to attend RSS shakhas.

In 1940, after the death of Dr. Hedgewar, many youngsters inspired by him joined the RSS in Maharashtra. Nanaji was among those enthused youths who joined the RSS devoting their whole life in service to the Nation. He was sent to Uttar Pradesh as a Pracharak. At Agra he met Deendayalji for the first time. Later, Nanaji went to Gorakhpur as a pracharak where he took great pains to introduce Sangh ideology in the eastern UP. It was not an easy task at that time as the Sangh had no funds to meet even day-today expenses. He had to stay in a Dharmashala but had to keep on changing Dharmashalas as no one was allowed to stay there for more than three days consecutively. Ultimately, he was given shelter by Baba Raghavdas on the condition that he would also cook meals for him.

Within three years, his hard work bore fruits and almost 250 Sangh Shakhas cropped up in and around Gorakhpur. Nanaji always laid great emphasis on education. He established Bharat’s first Saraswati Sishu Mandir at Gorakhpur in 1950. It reflects Nanaji’s love for education and knowledge.

In 1947 two journals “Rashtradharma” and “Panchjanya” and a newspaper called “Swadesh” were launched by those inspired by Sangh. Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee was assigned the responsibility of the editor and Shri Deendayalji was made the Margdharshak with Nanaji as the Managing Director. It was a challenging task as the organization was hard up for money to bring out the publications, yet it did never dampen their spirits and these publications gained popularity and recognition.

Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination led to imposition of ban on the RSS and publication work came to a grinding halt. A different strategy was adopted keeping the ban in mind and Nanaji was the brain behind underground publication work by the RSS those days. When the ban was lifted and it was decided to have a political organization, Jana Sangh came into being. Nanaji was asked by Shri Guruji to take charge of Bharatiya Jana Sangh in Uttar Pradesh as party Secretary. Nanaji had worked as RSS pracharak in Uttar Pradesh and his groundwork proved of a great help in organizing BJS at the grass roots. By 1957 BJS had established its units at each and every district in Uttar Pradesh and credit for this goes to the Nanaji who had extensively traveled all over the State.

Soon, BJS became a force to reckon with in Uttar Pradesh. In 1967 BJS became the part of United Legislature Party Government headed by Chaudhary Charan Singh. Nanaji played a crucial role in evolving the alliance as he enjoyed good relations with Charan Singh and Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia. He was successful in bringing leaders of different political background on one platform to give Uttar Pradesh its first non-Congress government.

A political giant, like Chandra Bhanu Gupta, had to face one of the biggest challenges of his life when Nanaji outwitted him not once but thrice. On one occasion, he planned a strategy to defeat the Congress nominee and CB Gupta’s favorite in Rajya Sabha. When CB Gupta himself contested elections from Lucknow in 1957, Nanaji crafted an alliance with socialist groups and helped Babu Triloki Singh in registering an impressive win over Gupta. Shri Gupta faced another embarrassment when he was again defeated at Maudaha in Uttar Pradesh.

In Uttar Pradesh BJS gained strength from Deendayalji’s margdarhsan, Atalji’s oratory skills and Nanaji’s organizational work and it emerged as an important player in the State politics. Nanaji always shared good relations not only with his party colleagues but also with his Opponents. Shri CB Gupta, who suffered many humiliating, defeats at the hands of Nanaji, yet he continued to have great respect for him and called him ‘Nana Phadanvis ‘. His relations with Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia changed the course of Indian politics. Once he invited Dr. Lohia in BJS karaykarta sammelan where he met Deendayalji for the first time and this association brought the BJS closer to socialist parties in exposing the Congress and its misrule.

Nanaji actively participated in Bhoodan Movement started by Vinoba Bhave. By spending two months with Vinoba he was inspired by the success and appeal of the movement. When Jai Prakash Narayan gave the call for” Total Revolution” he responded by giving total support to this movement. When the Janata Party was formed Nanaji was one of its main architects. Janata Party stormed into power by sweeping off the Congress and Nanaji was elected from Balrampur parliamentary constituency in Uttar Pradesh. When he was offered ministerial berth by the then Prime Minister, Shri Morarjee Desai he politely refused it. For him politics was never a career but a mission. He was not the person who would stick to politics or office come what may. Of his own volition he announced his retirement from politics in presence of Jai Paraksh Narain and since then never looked back.

Nanaji later devoted his entire time to Deendayal Research Institute that he himself established way back in 1969. He established Chitarkoot Gramodya Vishwavidyalaya in Chitrakoot, Independent India’s first rural university and was its first Chancellor.

Nanaji later devoted his entire time to Deendayal Research Institute that he himself established way back in 1969. He established Chitarkoot Gramodya Vishwavidyalaya in Chitrakoot, Independent Bharat’s first rural university and was its first Chancellor. Hon’ble Dr. Abdul Kalam was greatly inspired by the work done in rural development in Chitrakoot.

How Shall We Recover our Lost Intellectual Freedom

Sri Aurobindo says " How shall we recover our lost intellectual freedom? By reversing, for the time being, the process by which we lost it, by liberating our minds in all subjects from the thralldom to authority. The Anglicized ask us to abandon authority, revolt against superstition to have free minds. What they mean is that we should renounce authority of the Vedas for Max Muller, the Monism of Sankara for the Monism of Haeckel, the dogmatisms of Pandits for the dogmatisms of European thinkers, scientists and scholars. Let us break our chains in order to be free, in the name of truth, not in the name of Europe.

Our first necessity, if India is to survive and do her appointed work in the world, is that the youth of India should learn to think, - to think on all subjects, to think independently, fruitfully, going to the heart of things, not stopped by their surface, free of prejudgments, shearing sophism and prejudice asunder as with a sharp sword, smiting down obscurantism of all kinds as with the mace of Bhima…”.